The last seven days have been difficult for many of us in our twenties as we saw our own millennial icon pass away. One week ago, at the time of this writing, Chester Bennington, lead singer of Alternative Rock band Linkin Park, took his own life. I’ve heard the stories from friends and seen the posts on social media and my story is not much different. LP was my first favorite band, the first albums I ever owned were Hybrid Theory and Meteora, I owe a lot to Chester and LP. Call it an exaggeration all you want, but, for better or for worse, I wouldn’t be the person I am today without their music. I wouldn’t have the friends I have, or had the experiences I’ve had if a nine year old boy didn’t stumble across a fan made music video for In The End using footage from Dragon Ball Z. It took me a while to start writing this as I was hit very hard by this news. It was difficult for me to think about it without getting too emotional and even now it still hurts.
Knowing what LP has meant to me many members of my family have asked me “why.” I’m not here to discuss the “why” because frankly, when it comes to depression, there is no “why.” Depression is an illness. When I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease no one asked me “why,” when I was hospitalized due to complications with it I wasn’t asked “why.” If a person is diagnosed with Cancer the first course of action isn’t to dwell on the cause but to work towards a solution. So depression needs to be treated like the illness it is. It’s unacceptable that there are so many cases of this every single day.
Although there is no cure for depression we must do all we can to help everyone. You rarely know if someone is suffering from depression until it’s too late. So be good to one another, life is hard as it is, find something that makes it easier and on to it, instead of making it harder on someone else.
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